RURAL TALES, BALLADS, AND SONGS:


By ROBERT BLOOMFIELD,

Author of _The Farmers Boy_


LONDON:
Printed for Vernor and Hood, Poultry;
and Longman and Rees, Paternoster-Row

By T. Bensley, Bolt-court, Fleet-street.

1802




PREFACE.


The Poems here offered to the Public were chiefly written during the
interval between the concluding and the publishing of THE FARMER'S BOY, an
interval of nearly two years. The pieces of a later date are, _the Widow
to her Hour-Glass, the Fakenham Ghost, Walter and Jane_, &c. At the tune
of publishing the Farmer's Boy, circumstances occurred which rendered it
necessary to submit these Poems to the perusal of my Friends: under whose
approbation I now give them, with some confidence as to their moral merit,
to the judgment of the Public. And as they treat of village manners, and